About · Our Story · Notre histoire

The lab table warped in minutes.
That’s where the mission began.

You saw the short version on our homepage. This is the fuller story — what we witnessed during five years inside some of the world’s largest cosmetics companies, why we ultimately rebelled against the industry, and the two discoveries that devastated us.

Backlit blood-orange slices, veins glowing red against white

It all started with Vitamin C

The Antioxidant Paradox

As an 18-year-old freshman at UC Berkeley, Susie Wang saved a week’s worth of lunch money to buy an expensive Vitamin C serum from a famous department-store brand. Within days of opening the bottle, the white serum had turned brown.

Brown meant it had oxidized. Once oxidized, Vitamin C loses its potency and can no longer provide the antioxidant protection the product promised. A serum designed to defend skin from oxidative damage had become unstable before she had barely begun using it.

She bought several more Vitamin C serums from other prestigious brands. Every one of them oxidized.

So she set out to solve the problem herself. She developed a method to keep vitamins from oxidizing in skincare and filed for a patent. Job offers flooded her inbox. She put school on hiatus and accepted contract positions with three of the largest cosmetics companies in the world.

Susie Was inside the industry for five years.

Three companies. Three very different educations.

Three of the world’s largest cosmetics companies hired her because of her patent filing. We won’t name them. She signed NDAs — and, as this story unfolds, they eventually become the nemesis.

What she witnessed inside each one was different. None of it flattering.

New technology

For the first, she concepted new cosmetic technologies and innovations.

Brands for 2,000 stores

For the second, she created multiple beauty brands for a retail chain with more than 2,000 locations.

Their natural line

For the third, she developed concepts and initial formulas behind the company’s clean beauty brand.

When the contracts came up for renewal five years later, she declined them all. What she had witnessed inside the industry made it impossible to stay.

Petri dishes of clear gels and crystals, a pipette mid-drop, and a translucent bougainvillea sprig on pale glass

The turning point

A chemical warped the lab table

She accidentally knocked over a chemical used in an eye cream. It splashed across the lab bench, and within minutes, the surface had visibly warped.

If it could do that to a lab table, what could it do to skin? That question sent her deep into years of ingredient and toxicology research. What she found devastated her: ingredients commonly used in cosmetics had been linked in animal studies to cancer, reproductive harm, birth defects, and other serious health effects.

A hare in silhouette against mist and low sun

Cruelty Free loophole

“Not tested on animals” was not always the whole truth.

Then came another devastating discovery — one that felt deeply personal.

For Susie — an animal lover who had been vegan for most of her life — it felt like a profound betrayal.

A finished formula might never be tested on an animal. But that did not necessarily mean the individual ingredients had never been tested on animals, or that animal testing had not occurred elsewhere in the supply chain.

So “no animal testing” was not always the whole truth. Read our cruelty-free commitment.

100% Pure fruit-pigmented lip gloss dripping onto a fresh-cut strawberry, surrounded by whole strawberries

Two 100% Pure pressed-powder compacts resting on drifts of their own crushed rose and golden pigment

Free of toxins · full of nutrients

The FDA bans 11 ingredients. We ban 2,870 & all 4,000+ PFAS.

We built our own ingredient standard by cross-referencing some of the world’s most consequential chemical-safety and cosmetics lists. Then we went further.

If a substance appears within any of the categories we prohibit, it does not enter a 100% Pure formula. Not reduced. Not used below a warning threshold. Absent.

1,987 prohibited substances — EU Cosmetics Regulation, Annex II

Approximately 900 chemicals linked to cancer or reproductive harm — California Proposition 65

500+ prohibited or restricted chemicals — Health Canada Cosmetic Ingredient Hotlist

4,000+ forever chemicals — the entire PFAS family

After overlaps among these lists are removed, our standard excludes 2,870 individual substances — plus all 4,000+ PFAS.

And being free of harmful ingredients is only the beginning. Every ingredient that remains must earn its place through its purpose, performance, purity, and benefit to skin.

Our botanical ingredients are selected in their most vital form — organic whenever available, minimally processed, and extracted through methods chosen to preserve their beneficial compounds. Oils are first- or cold-pressed when appropriate; aromatic botanicals are steam-distilled. We reject unnecessary fillers and never dilute a formula simply to make it cheaper.

100% Pure fruit-pigmented lipsticks lying in swatches of berry juice among fresh blackberries

Our signature invention

Makeup pigmented by fruit.

Susie invented fruit-pigmented makeup — color cosmetics tinted with antioxidant-rich pigments from fruit and other plants instead of synthetic dyes.

Synthetic dyes are normally full of harmful heavy metals such as mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, and chromium. Fruit pigments carry none of that — and they bring their own antioxidants, vitamins, and nutrients with them.

Where does the berry end and the color begin? With fruit pigments, there is no line. The color is the nutrition.

Giant kelp fronds lit from above in clear ocean water

How labels work

A kelp extract is rarely just kelp.

A supplier’s kelp extract may arrive as a blend of kelp, water, alcohol, preservatives, and other processing ingredients. Yet under cosmetic-labeling rules, certain components may not have to appear separately on the finished product’s ingredient list if they remain only at insignificant levels and serve no function in the final formula. So the label may name the kelp without revealing every substance used to make or preserve the extract. It is the same reason “fragrance” can legally represent dozens of undisclosed chemicals.

Every single ingredient is included in everything we make for 100% transparency.

For a natural-beauty story, O Magazine sent hundreds of natural products to an independent laboratory and had every one analyzed against its own label. Not tested for safety — tested for honesty. Does the bottle contain what the box claims, and does it contain anything the box doesn’t mention? Two brands came back clean. We were one of the two.

“The only ones that have exactly what you say you have, and don’t have anything else that isn’t on the label — after testing hundreds of brands.”

Brian Underwood · Beauty Director, O Magazine

The recorded conversation is available on request.

Babylon lab bench with an overhead mixer, flasks, and the Babylon mark on the wall

The 100% Pure solar-powered lab, manufacturing facility, and headquarters building in Silicon Valley, California, behind flowering shrubs

Silicon Valley · San Jose, California

We own the lab and the factory.

Factory-direct means better formulas, without the extra markup.

Babylon, our laboratory and manufacturing facility, is owned outright by the four of us — Susie Wang, James Wang, Ric Kostick, and Dr. Cody Chalker. It runs entirely on solar power and makes the formulas for every one of our brands. That is how a company our size has a team of PhD chemists who treat formulating cosmetics with as much rigor as pharmaceutical drugs.

We chose San Jose, California, because we are at the heart of Silicon Valley — a place where scientists, engineers, inventors, and ambitious thinkers come together to solve difficult problems and build what doesn’t exist yet. That mindset belongs in beauty too.

Most beauty products come out of contract manufacturers that recycle the same diluted base formulas over and over, swapping in a new extract, fragrance, or marketing story. Because outside manufacturers must protect their own margins, many brands’ formulas get watered down with cheap fillers, lower concentrations of actives and less expensive ingredients. Outsourcing adds another business — and another margin — between the formula and the customer.

We don’t work that way, because we don’t have to. Formulation and manufacturing are the heart and soul of a cosmetics company, so we could never outsource them — or leave the quality of our formulas in the hands of another business with its own financial interests.

Because we own and operate our laboratory and manufacturing facility, we control every stage — from ingredient sourcing and formulation to production and quality testing. That gives us direct control over purity, concentration, processing, freshness, stability, and performance.

Babylon is certified to ISO 22716, the international standard for cosmetic manufacturing practices. Our PhD scientists research, formulate, and test in the same building where our products are made.

Many beauty companies are built around branding, marketing, and packaging first. Our strength — and our first priority — is the formula: built around purity, high-quality ingredients, scientific rigor, and uncompromising standards.

It is also why, when you email us, the answer comes back from the people who made the thing.

The people

Who’s made it their life mission to create the healthiest products.

James Wang, Ric Kostick, and Susie Wang with two rescue dogs in the 100% Pure studio

James Wang, Ric Kostick & Susie Wang

Founders · 100% Pure

The founders of 100% Pure, the pioneers of clean beauty.

Susie conceived 100% PURE and brought the vision to life alongside her brother James and fellow UC Berkeley student Ric. United by a passion to make the wrongs of the cosmetics industry right, they built the company as a mission — not simply a business. James led manufacturing with uncompromising attention to quality, while Ric has served as CEO since inception. More than 27 years later, they remain committed to creating healthier products for people, animals, and the planet.

Susie Wang

Founder

Brought the first clean beauty brand to the prestige market, retailed at Sephora, Nordstrom, and other high-end retailers. Invented 100% Pure’s fruit-pigmented makeup, and has spent the years since extracting pigment from other plants for use in color cosmetics. Approves every formula.

Dr. Cody Chalker

PhD Chemist · Chief Scientist

PhD in Chemistry from Texas A&M University, specializing in surface science and nanotechnology, followed by a postdoc at UC Davis. Works on nanoscale delivery — moving active nutrients further into the skin without solvents or synthetic carriers.

Why we never sold

We received multiple eight- and nine‑figure offers. We turned them down.

Over the years, we received dozens of letters of intent from strategic buyers and private equity firms interested in acquiring what we built.

But selling would have put the mission at risk — to create the highest-quality, purest, healthiest products possible while protecting and benefiting animals and the environment, to the degree we have managed over the decades.

It would have been ironic, and completely counterproductive, to hand over a company created to challenge the beauty industry to the same forces we had spent years resisting.

So we remained independent. We walked away from tens of millions of dollars for each partner.

We will only consider selling if the standards we built are guaranteed for the lifetime of the brand — with an ironclad promise that the quality, purity, and integrity of our products will never be compromised or sacrificed.

We know that walking away from acquisition offers may mean never having the biggest marketing budgets or the most elaborate packaging design. But we would rather invest in top scientists than top marketing, PR, or design talent. Our first and foremost priority has always been the quality of our formulas.

And honestly, we love being able to make such a positive impact. It fills our hearts with joy to donate to causes that are deeply meaningful to us — and that fulfillment is priceless.

Growth and cash in our pockets were never worth surrendering our mission.

We chose not to sell because 100% PURE is more than a company to us. It’s our way of helping animals, protecting the earth, and caring for the things we hold closest to our hearts.

James Wang, co-founder of 100% Pure, nose to nose with a rescued puppy — 100% of profits to save dogs from the Yulin Dog Meat Festival

Susie Wang, co-founder of 100% Pure, hugging a rescued Bernese puppy — 100% of profits to save dogs from the Yulin Dog Meat Festival

Ric Kostick, co-founder of 100% Pure, with a rescued bulldog — 100% of profits to save dogs from the Yulin Dog Meat Festival

Solar panels across the roof of our San Jose facility at sunset

Sustainable since 1999

Made cleanly, start to finish.

Everything we make is formulated and manufactured in our own Silicon Valley, California facility, powered entirely by solar energy.

Because we make our own products, we can manufacture closer to demand instead of producing enormous quantities months — or years — before they are needed. The beauty industry quietly destroys vast amounts of unsold and expired inventory. We make ours fresh and closely manage production, helping reduce unnecessary product and packaging waste.

An aloe leaf split open, showing the clear juice inside

When you start with plants

Sustainability comes more naturally.

Being botanical-based, what remains after extraction can be composted rather than treated as chemical waste. By avoiding toxic solvents and persistent synthetic ingredients, we create less problematic waste from the start. Most of the botanicals we use in our formulas come from regenerative farms and are certified organic — grown without synthetic pesticides or chemical fertilizers while helping to restore soil health, support biodiversity, and strengthen the land over time.

Our formulas are designed with the environment in mind, too. We do not formulate with plastic ingredients or intentionally added microplastics — including acrylates, the liquid plastic polymers behind many gel and long-wear formulas, which wash down the drain and do not readily biodegrade. We never use PFAS — the "forever chemicals," a family of more than 4,000 substances that persist in water, soil, and living things for generations. And we use no silicones at all — worth knowing because the most persistent of them behave much like forever chemicals: they do not readily break down, and they linger in waterways long after they wash off.

Our sunscreens never contain oxybenzone or octinoxate — two UV filters associated with damage to coral reefs. All of it is covered by our banned ingredient list of 2,870 chemicals.

What goes in — and what stays out

Vegan, and built for the environment.

Our formulas are vegan with one exception: our Ginseng Royal Jelly Mask, which contains royal jelly and Manuka honey. Everything else is made without animal-derived ingredients — no carmine from crushed insects, no lanolin from sheep's wool, no animal collagen, no squalene from shark livers — using plant alternatives instead. Vegan is a cruelty choice first, but it is an environmental one too: plant ingredients generally need less land and less water, and they leave animals out of it entirely.

Our packaging matters, too. Plastic tubes made with recycled plastic and certified BPA- and phthalate-free. Glass and aluminum packaging made with recycled materials. Makeup compacts made from recycled paper and aluminum soda cans. Outer cartons made from post-consumer recycled paper and printed with vegetable-based inks. Shipping cushioning made from recycled kraft paper — never plastic void fill or foam. Inventory and packaging are carefully managed to reduce excess inventory, obsolete components, and unnecessary waste.

Making everything ourselves in California also gives us something unusual in beauty: visibility and control over the entire process, from formulation and production to packaging and waste.

Beyond our own walls, we fund tree planting, support organizations that remove plastic from the oceans, and help provide clean water to communities where it is scarce.

We don't have a solution for pumps yet. A pump is a precision mechanism made from multiple components, and recycled materials have not yet given us the consistency and formula protection we require — which is why, wherever a pump isn't essential, we package in squeezable tubes made from recycled plastic instead. We continue to look for a better solution, and when the technology is ready, we will be too.

We also thought about going plastic-free altogether. But the plastic already exists — it will either get another life as our tubes, or sit in a landfill for centuries. We would rather give it another life.

For us, sustainability has never been a campaign or a trend.

It's simply how we've believed beauty should be made since 1999.

Two Great Pyrenees dogs on a green hilltop at sunset, watching cows graze against the valley below

What we’re building toward

The part that isn’t finished, and what we’re building.

Every formula biodegradable

Packaging from post-consumer recycled glass, plastic, and aluminum — including materials diverted from landfill

Boxes from post-consumer recycled paper

Printed in non-toxic plant-based inks

California headquarters powered by 100% solar energy

No plastic ingredients, so no microplastics into the oceans. No toxins to pollute or harm.

Since the beginning we have contributed, and continue to contribute, money to ending animal cruelty, planting trees, cleaning plastic out of the oceans, providing clean water where it is scarce, feeding shelter animals, and other positive impacts made possible by your support.

The next thing we want to build is an animal sanctuary of our own.

After decades of supporting shelters, rescues, and animal welfare organizations, we want to create a permanent refuge ourselves — a place where abused, neglected, and abandoned animals can be safe, cared for, and loved for the rest of their lives.

100% Pure will continue supporting charitable causes while we build a dedicated reserve towards opening our animal sanctuary.

This chapter is still being written. Explore our skincare and makeup collections, or return here for updates as the vision takes shape.

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The lab table warped in minutes.
That’s where the mission began.

The Antioxidant Paradox